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Toronto’s Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly is happy. Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion is ecstatic. And, based on their votes, Torontonians have a smile on their faces today as the region propelled the Kathleen Wynne Liberals back to power.

The Liberals somehow endured a slew of scandals to defeat Conservative Tim Hudak and return with a majority government.

Fear of Tim Hudak’s message of fiscal austerity and far right conservatism no doubt scared voters into the Liberal fold — especially in the Greater Toronto Area. But endorsements from Kelly and, particularly, McCallion, gave the Liberals a boost.

Liberal won 37 of the GTA’s 43 ridings, up seven.

In an unlikely a victory as one can imagine — considering scandals on Ornge, e-Health, and the gas plants closure — Liberal promise of investment in transit, jobs and pensions won out over fears about Conservative job cuts and transit upheaval.

Ontarians just didn’t like the message of 100,000 lost jobs at a time when job insecurity is so high. And Torontonians surmised that many of those jobs would be ones belonging to their family and neighbours.

Maybe it was Wynne’s likeability; maybe it was strategic voting by traditional New Democrats to stop the Conservatives; maybe urban voters just don’t connect with Hudak. The combination proved lethal.

Just ask veteran Conservative Doug Holyday, winner of a byelection last August to give the Tories a lone seat inside Toronto, the face of Hudak’s transit plan, former Etobicoke mayor, high-profile right-winger and star candidate. He went down in flames to Liberal Peter Milczyn — the very city counicllor Holyday defeated to win the by-election.

Torontonians weren’t buying whatever the Conservatives were selling.

And a veteran like New Democrat Rosario Marchese lost in downtown Toronto to Liberal Han Dong, maybe a victim of strategic voting.

Endorsing Wynne and the Liberals was an easy decision for Kelly and McCallion. Whatever their issues, the Liberals have been good to municipalities; and they should be good for the Toronto region at a most critical point in development of transit plans.

The next few years could be tumultuous ones for regional transit, an issue that resonates and dominate many conversations about traffic congestion.

Mayoral candidates in Toronto have competing ideas on how to re-image the city’s transit priorities. Meanwhile, Wynne just got re-elected on a platform promising specific transit gains and funding. Where these conflict with a new mandate for a Toronto mayor elected in October, the plans will require stage managing and collaboration.

Wynne and the Liberals have displayed a cooperative spirit.

Wynne inherited the scandals from her predecessor, Dalton McGuinty. She also inherited his penchant for respecting cities and towns. Listen to McCallion and you get the impression that mayors like her don’t easily forget that type of partnership.

McGuinty also started an era of uploading the costs of key services downloaded by the Mike Harris government. Wynne continues the practice that has created billions of dollars of room in municipal budgets. Mayors and municipal councils don’t forget that.

Now, all that goodwill could vanish quickly if Queen’s Park and Toronto clash over transit plans. For example, mayoral candidates Olivia Chow and David Soknacki both advocate replacing the Bloor-Danforth subway extension with an LRT.

It’s inconceivable that Wynne would accede to that, especially when candidates like Mitzie Hunter built a campaign that was very subway-heavy. So, expect some tension should Chow win.

The transit plan of John Tory, another mayoral candidate, would seem more closely aligned to the Liberals. He wants to use the GO transit corridor to run frequent service to relieve transit congestion on the Yonge subway line.

Wynne promises to electrify the GO corridor for all-day frequent service — a pre-requisite to the Tory plan.

In all, the Liberals presented a transit plan that matches what residents and politicians have been studying and massaging for years. Hudak promised uncertainty and a rethinking of plans.

Scarborough would have received a bonanza of subways. Hudak promised to push ahead with the planned extension of the Bloor-Danforth subway up McCowan Rd. to the Sheppard. And he would have stopped the current plan by linking that subway with an extension of the Sheppard Subway from Don Mills to McCowan.

Scarborough responded by voting in Liberals.

Hudak had promised to scrap the Finch LRT and the Sheppard LRT. He didn’t win any seats in those corridors either. Neither did he resonate in Mississauga where he also promised to stop a long-anticipated LRT.

Unlike his uncommon-sense revolutionary forerunner Mike Harris, in whose government he served, Hudak did not promise to destroy everything and re-create a few in his neo-con image. But his rhetoric foreshadowed an era of change far beyond what the Liberals and new Democrats offered.

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